Samsung must have known it had a problem early in the Galaxy S5's run when most of the reviews called the phone "boring" or "predictable," while also conceding that it was a good device. A good, predictable phone isn't going to sell like gangbusters, and indeed, the Galaxy S5 fell short of expectations. Over the next few months, we saw devices like the Galaxy Alpha and Galaxy Note 4 that played around with more premium materials and different designs, but the Galaxy S6 is the culmination of Samsung's plans to rehab its reputation.

The Galaxy S6 is still distinctly Samsung with the oblong home button, big camera sensor, and industry-leading AMOLED panel, but it almost feels like it was made by a version of Samsung from some bizarre parallel reality where plastic doesn't exist. It's a phone I don't think any of us expected out of Samsung. Sure, maybe some more metal, that was a given, but no SD card? No removable battery? The Gorilla Glass chassis? This is a new phone for a new Samsung—let's see how it handles.

Specs

Display

5.1-inch Super AMOLED 2560x1440, 577 PPI

Processor

Samsung Exynos 7420 octa-core Cortex-A57/A53

RAM

3GB

Storage

32, 64, 128GB

Battery

2550mAh (2600mAh Edge)

Camera

16MP with OIS (back), 5MP (front)

Wireless

Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band

Measurements

142.1 x 70.1 x 7 mm, 132g

The Good

Design

This is finally a premium Samsung phone that feels premium.

Fingerprint sensor

The touch-based sensor under the home button works very well. It's worlds better than the swipe version last year.

Display

The GS6 has a stunning 1440p AMOLED screen. Maybe all the extra pixels don't matter, but the colors, viewing angles, and brightness are fantastic either way.

Performance

Almost always blazing fast, especially with that new UFS 2.0 storage.

Charging

Includes both wireless charging and fast charging over USB.

TouchWiz

Samsung pulled a lot of mediocre features completely and disabled others by default. It's a much cleaner, faster experience.

Camera

Super-fast launch time and excellent photos. The new Pro photo mode is nice as well.

Themes

While the themes right now aren't great, this feature has a ton of potential.

The Not So Good

Battery life

Battery life is average overall and a little shorter than the Galaxy S5

Some performance hiccups

Strange slowdowns in some places like the Briefing screen and scrolling widgets.

No removable storage / battery

You know... if that's a big deal to you.

TouchWiz Again

If you didn't like TouchWiz before, you still won't. There are a few annoyances, mostly in the launcher.

Lots of slippery glass

The Gorilla Glass 4 back shouldn't break when you drop it... but it is glass. In the meantime, it will be covered with fingerprints.

Design And Build Quality

You have probably heard this from everyone who has touched a Samsung Galaxy S6, but it feels like an incredibly solid phone. It would be an impressive piece of industrial design for any OEM, but especially for Samsung, which has always seemed to take a "good enough" approach to design. I can't think of an Android phone that feels like a more premium piece of hardware than the Galaxy S6. In fact, I'd put this device up against an iPhone any day of the week.

I can't think of an Android phone that feels like a more premium piece of hardware than the Galaxy S6.

The front of the device is dominated by the 5.1-inch Super AMOLED panel, which I'll get into later. The bezels have been slimmed down dramatically this year, at least on the normal GS6. There essentially are no bezels on the Edge variant. The Gorilla Glass 4 front on the standard GS6 actually curves down ever so slightly at the edges to meet up with the aluminum band encircling the device (yes, it's metal instead of plastic with a chrome finish). There's zero gap between the glass and metal—it's extremely precise. I can't even slide a thin piece of paper in there.

The back panel is non-removable and made of Gorilla Glass 4, just like the screen. It also tapers to meet up with the aluminum band. Some people have very strong negative feelings about phones with a glass back. It's another thing to break, sure, but it does result in a more premium-feeling product that won't interfere with wireless charging or cellular signals like metal does. A quick aside, I'm so pleased that Samsung built wireless charging into this device. Spending $30 on wireless charging backs for past devices was mega-lame.

Also on the back are the flash, heart rate sensor, and the 16MP camera. The camera hump sticks out a few millimeters from the rest of the phone, which is common in Samsung devices. However, the completely flat glass back prevents any tapering to hide the magnitude of the camera plateau. It's probably the sloppiest part of the design in my opinion, not that it's a deal breaker or anything. Still, it irks me a little that the Galaxy S6 doesn't lay flat ever.

The flat design isn't really ergonomic, like for example the Moto X, but the GS6 is thin and light enough that it's comfortable to hold. The speaker is on the bottom next to the USB port and headphone jack. It's fine, but this is still a tiny mono speaker with no bass. It gets reasonably loud, and it is much better to have it on the bottom rather than the back.

Samsung has a track record of jiggly buttons of all sorts, but the tighter design extends to this aspect of the Galaxy S6 as well. The home, volume, and power buttons are all very stable and clicky. There's a tiny bit of rocking if you press on one end of the home button, but it doesn't feel loose. The buttons on the edge are all metal as well. My only button-related complaint is that the volume toggles are a little too high up on the left side. Well, I'm also not personally sold on Samsung's physical/capacitive button phalanx, but the company doesn't seem likely to change that. I prefer on-screen buttons because they're easier to press. Samsung could at least put the multitasking and back button on the right sides, don't you think?

One of Samsung's big innovations for the Galaxy S5 was the fingerprint reader built-into the home button, and it was kind of a dud. By "kind of," I guess what I mean is it definitely was. The swipe reader on that device was extremely awkward to use and of little use beyond the novelty factor. With the Galaxy S6, Samsung has finally gotten it right.

The fingerprint reader is so fast it almost obviates the need for Smart Lock.

All you need to do when using the fingerprint sensor is touch the home button. If you use the fingerprint screen unlock, you can literally just push the home button to wake the device and leave your finger there just a split second longer. That's enough for the phone to recognize you and unlock. The fingerprint reader is so fast it almost obviates the need for Smart Lock. The process of setting up fingerprints in the settings takes a bit longer than it did with the Galaxy S5, but you can register four fingers instead of three.

Bottom line—Samsung killed it with the design this year. You pick up this phone and it feels substantial without being heavy. It's actually a few grams lighter than the Galaxy S5 despite all the metal and glass, probably due in large part to the more svelte design and yes, the smaller battery. We'll talk about that shortly.

What about the Edge? I don't have a GS6 Edge on hand to talk about yet. We'll probably update this review or post something separately if there's anything important to report once we do get one.

The Screen

This just in—Samsung makes really fantastic AMOLED panels. You probably know this, but the screen on the Galaxy S6 is truly a thing of beauty. It retains the same 5.1-inch size as last year's flagship, but the resolution has been boosted to 2560x1440. That's the same resolution as the monitor I'm writing this on, and that kind of blows me away. Samsung has slowly but surely erased all the shortcomings of AMOLED technology, and with the Galaxy S6 you can enjoy the fruits of those labors. Samsung continues to be years ahead of everyone else when it comes to displays.

The Note 4 was the first Samsung device to make the jump to a 1440p Super AMOLED in 2014, but the Galaxy S5 was still 1080p. The GS6's increase in resolution has pushed the pixel density to a whopping 577 pixels per inch. It's debatable whether that makes a real difference on a smartphone, but I lean slightly toward the "okay sure, give me more pixels because why not" side of the argument. It's not going to be a night and day difference, no matter which side of the ideological divide you're on, but the Galaxy S6 doesn't suffer from the resolution bump like some devices (cough LG cough).

Samsung continues to be years ahead of everyone else when it comes to displays.

This screen gets incredibly bright when left on auto-brightness (over 600 nits) and can drop down to incredibly dim levels for use in a dark room (under 10 nits). This is one of the few devices I don't need to install an app that artificially dims the screen past the low point for use at night. The colors also remain accurate at the lower brightness level. On the Galaxy S5, the display would become noticeably purple when turned all the way down. Being an AMOLED, it of course has perfect black levels, and the viewing angles are great.

Samsung again has several display modes on the Galaxy S6 including basic, photo, cinema, and adaptive. The basic mode does a good job of reproducing colors accurately, at least to my eye. Still, I rather like the slightly more vibrant look of AMOLED photo mode. Adaptive defaults to brighter colors with a slight blue-ish tone, then it adjusts in supported apps based on ambient light. This looks really good in bright light, but I'd say photo mode is the best one. Really, though, there is no way to make this screen look bad. It's rapturously gorgeous.

Internals And Performance

Samsung kicked up some dust with its decision to go with an in-house 64-bit Exynos chip instead of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810. This was allegedly because of heat issues, which surely embarrassed Qualcomm in the run-up to spring phone season. It has been a few years since Samsung released a phone in the US with an Exynos instead of a Snapdragon, but the Exynos 7420 is a good way to bring it back.

This chip has an ARM reference big.LITTLE design with four Cortex-A57 (big) cores and four Cortex-A53 (LITTLE) cores. The chip is based on a 14nm manufacturing process that offers improved speed and thermal performance compared to most other chips on the market. The GPU is also an ARM reference design, the Mali-T760 MP8.

The Galaxy S6 feels very, very fast in virtually every situation. The healthy 3GB allotment of RAM also seems to be more than enough to keep things from falling out of memory too quickly (yes, even on Lollipop). I'll expand on this a little in the software section below.

You're looking at 32, 64, or 128GB of internal storage in the Galaxy S6, and that's it. As I'm sure you've heard, there is no microSD card slot. I'll just come out and say this doesn't bother me. I don't use a ton of internal storage on phones, and I'm actually quite happy to see Samsung ditch the 16GB base model. 32GB is more than enough for me personally, and you can pay for up to 128GB of (very fast) storage. If you need more than that, I hate to break it to you, but you're the edgiest of edge cases. You've always got another option if you truly cannot get by without removable storage...

Problem solved.

The Snapdragon 810 is under fire for being too toasty, but it's not like the Exynos 7420 doesn't get warm. It can get uncomfortably hot when charging (especially wireless) or if the CPU has been cranking away for too long. It's not anything out of the ordinary, though. In fact, it gets less toasty than the Galaxy S5 did last year, at least in my experience. Running a few benchmarks in a row, I'm able to get the GS6 up to about 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

Since some of you are probably looking for a direct number-by-number comparison, I ran a few benchmarks on the Galaxy S6, Nexus 6, LG G3, and HTC One M9. The first three have the same resolution, but different ARM chips (Exynos 7420, Snapdragon 805, and Snapdragon 801). The M9 is 1080p and running a Snapdragon 810. Here are the numbers for AndroBench (storage), AnTuTu (total system), and 3DMark (graphics). Note, the Nexus 6 is encrypted, but none of the other devices are.

So, clearly that UFS 2.0 storage in the Galaxy S6 is stupid fast, which makes loading content quite snappy. The overall Galaxy S6 system score in AnTuTu clobbers everyone else as well. The GPU keeps up nicely with previous generation Snapdragons, but I'm not surprised it's a little weaker than the competition. The HTC One M9 bests it in the GPU test, but that's the only win HTC's flagship ekes out.

Camera

Most of Samsung's cameras over the last few years have been great, or at least very good. There were some issues with the Galaxy Note 4, but in the grand scheme it was still a very capable 16MP shooter, as was the Galaxy S5. The resolution hasn't been increased this year, but the Galaxy S6 still makes some notable strides in usability and image quality.

The Galaxy S6 camera has optical image stabilization to reduce hand-shake blurriness and a wider f/1.9 aperture to improve low-light performance. About the low-light, I think this device improves noticeably upon the Galaxy S5, which suffered a bit in dimmer situations. It's sometimes inconsistent, but most of the images I'm taking in poor lighting turn out fairly crisp with very little grain. The image in the gallery below of the Android atop my banister was taken in a dim hallway at dusk. Looks okay, right?

Both the Note 4 and Galaxy S5 could take a weirdly long time to open the camera app and get ready to capture, but Samsung is bragging about its sub-one second camera start up this year. That's definitely true if the camera has been used recently, but from a cold start I'd say it's slightly longer than a second. I'm splitting hairs, though—that's still great. You can double-tap the home button to open the camera as well, and this works from anyplace. Yes, even if the phone is asleep.

The full resolution 16MP images are shot in 16:9, but you can step down to 4:3 12MP snapshots if you prefer. As long as you're not planning to crop the files, you should be fine there. The video default is 1080p, but 4K is available too. You don't have to worry about capture time for video or stills. As I pointed out above, the GS6's internal storage lives up to the hype.

Auto mode will do the job for most people, but Samsung has added a new Pro mode with a ton of options including ISO, white balance, manual exposure, manual focus, and metering. The live HDR preview mode lets you get an idea of what a shot will look like with and without that mode enabled, but capture speed is virtually instantaneous in either. For the pickier out there, the Galaxy S6 even supports the Lollipop Camera2 API so you can find a third-party app to take full advantage of the sensor and save RAW images.

Camera with Pro mode

I don't consider myself excessively picky about image quality, but the image the Galaxy S6 spits out is at least passable, and most of the time it's fantastic. The combination of OIS and the wider aperture lens makes for excellent photos. They have good detail, and Samsung avoids over-sharpening and excessive smoothing. Most phones have great sensors these days, so it's the software and processing that makes or breaks them. Samsung has that part figured out.

Battery Life

Possibly more contentious than the decision to ditch the microSD card slot is the lack of a removable battery. Some Samsung fans have gotten used to swapping in spare batteries when a charger isn't handy, or when the original cell starts to wear out after a year or two. That's much more difficult when you need to partially disassemble the phone to reach the lithium-ion cell. As such, battery life is more important than usual for the Galaxy S6 with its smaller 2550mAh capacity (2600mAh in the Edge).

To preface, battery usage is a highly personal metric. The way I use this phone might be very different from the way you use it. My idea of normal usage involves mostly WiFi connectivity, some LTE music streaming, ample messaging, several Google accounts syncing, and all location services on. Additionally, I'm aware of some concern related to WiFi calling and VoLTE on T-Mobile possibly causing wakelocks and draining battery. To be safe, I turned those off. I also left the regular and ultra power saving modes off, though they are a useful way to scrape by for a bit longer.

So what are my experiences with the Galaxy S6's battery life? It's... okay. I don't find myself with range anxiety when I go out, but I'm conscious this device is safe to use only for a single day without some time on the charger. Luckily the use of fast charging means you don't need to keep it plugged in for long.

I don't find myself with range anxiety when I go out, but I'm conscious this device is safe to use only for a single day without some time on the charger.

With light usage, it runs almost a day and a half with 2-3 hours of screen-on time. With heavier usage throughout the day, it'll be drained in about 18-20 hours with maybe 4-5 hours of screen time. This is about on-par with a lot of flagship phones, but it's probably 10-15% worse than the Galaxy S5.

I suspect Samsung is using this as a differentiator to refine its product tiers in 2015. The Galaxy S series is stylish, slim, and offers one day of battery life. The Galaxy Note, meanwhile, comes with a much larger battery and a bigger screen.

This is just speculation on my part, but I bet the Note 5 will continue to be the battery king in 2015. That's just not the market the Galaxy S6 is aimed at. So, yes, the battery life is problematic, but it's not a deal breaker for me. It's good enough. You are free to feel differently.

TouchWiz Is Still TouchWiz

There were rumors leading up to the Galaxy S6 launch that Samsung was going to go for a more stock look and feel. Well, that's not really the case. This version of Android 5.0.2 Lollipop is still clearly related to previous versions of TouchWiz, but there are some notable changes. Some of those are good and others not so good.

The experience of booting up a Galaxy S6 for the first time is much less annoying than it was with the Galaxy S5. Not only are there fewer weird and unnecessary features enabled by default, there are fewer of them included. Things like Air View, toolbox, one-handed mode, high screen sensitivity, and others are not just disabled—they're gone. I'm sure the seven people who used Air View on the Galaxy S5 will be devastated.

Most of the TouchWiz UI tweaks are still present. You're still looking at a light blue UI with green accents, but it's less garish than previous versions of TouchWiz. Also, that hilariously large screen of quick setting toggles has been done away with. Now you have two screens of toggles in the notification shade and that's it. The (useless) notification buttons for S Finder and Quick Connect are still present, though.

The settings look mostly the same, but everything has been condensed. That's mostly a good thing, but sometimes useful things (like Smart Lock, for example) are buried several layers deeper than in stock Android. The settings shortcuts at the top of the list help a bit with that. Slimming down the feature list is a great thing overall. There are fewer things running in the background and you don't need to go through and disable 30 settings just to use your phone.

Samsung has adopted Android 5.0's priority notification scheme, but there's still a traditional silent mode option. It's actually kind of a strange hybrid system—the volume toggle can go to vibrate and silent, but there's no all/priority/none selector. Those modes are all in the system settings under "Do not disturb" without the standard Android naming scheme. You can still set apps as "priority," though, which seems oddly disconnected from the rest of Samsung's terminology. Everything is still there, but it's weird that Samsung decided to do its own thing here. But hey, silent mode.

Slimming down the feature set seems to have made the software on the Galaxy S6 quite stable. I haven't had any crashes or random reboots, which is more common than it should be with brand new phones. I've given this phone all I have by letting the Android setup process install a few dozen apps, but everything is going smoothly with no unusual wakelock activity. The Galaxy S5 had a nasty habit of staying awake for no real reason, but this phone seems fine. The GS6 has been running for a full week with no reboots or crashes. Switching apps is sometimes slow, though.

As for the TouchWiz home screen, I have not traditionally had much trouble with it. Well, I don't really like what Samsung has done with the home screen this time.

For starters, the Galaxy S6 has a parallax effect that shifts the wallpaper around as you move the phone, a little like iOS. Every wallpaper image (included and third-party) does this on the stock launcher. I find it annoying, but whatever you can just turn it off, right? Wrong. There does not appear to be any way to disable this feature. Ugh.

The My Magazine panel is back, but now it's called Briefing (as I believe it was on the Note 4). This Flipboard-powered news feed is on the far left home screen panel and acts like a poor man's BlinkFeed. I'm not opposed to the idea of having some sort of content over there, but Briefing is so laggy. This device feels incredibly fast almost all the time, but then you swipe over to the Briefing screen and the UI just stops for a second. Once you're there, Briefing is still a buggy mess that frequently fails to load articles. I would say Samsung still has some work to do here, but they just shouldn't bother. Luckily, you can turn this feature off.

The app drawer also earns my scorn with its complete lack of consistent organization. It comes with a custom layout and folders, but even when you organize it alphabetically, it doesn't stay like that. New apps are tacked on at the end and removing apps leaves gaps on the various pages. You can hit the A-Z button at the top to reflow it in the right order, but what? I don't even understand why they would design it like this.

Another TouchWiz oddity is the way third-party widgets behave on the home screen. Scrollable widgets (i.e. Twitter clients, calendars, etc.) have extremely stuttery animations. They work fine on other launchers, so I'm not sure what's going on with Samsung's launcher. This, along with the parallax thing, are enough of an annoyance that I can't see myself using the stock home screen going forward.

If you're going to twist my arm and force me to say something nice about the launcher, well, it's cool that you can change the grid size to 4x5 or 5x5 from the standard 4x4. The widget list in TouchWiz is also excellent. It groups all the widgets from an app into a single folder that you can select from.

Samsung did make some questionable decisions with TouchWiz, but replacing the home screen alleviates almost all of my pain points. TouchWiz on the Galaxy S6 is overall faster, less cluttered, and more refined than it has ever been.

Themes

Let's talk about the theme store for a moment. As I mentioned above, there are still some things about TouchWiz that aren't great, but maybe a theme could help? That requires the themes be good first, and thus far there are only a few that are even close to being acceptable.

Samsung's themes are the whole package—ringtones, background, system UI, and icons. You can't choose individual parts of a theme to apply, but you can change the wallpaper or sounds after applying.

A lot of what is included at launch are very over-the-top with ridiculous colors or cutesy characters. There are a few somewhat more understated options, but none of them seem completely baked. For example, the AMOLED-friendly Cogul Black theme has white wire-frame icons that are completely invisible in system dialog pop ups. Many themes also include background images in the settings or dialer that make text harder to read. Here are some screens of the themes.

It's not clear if Samsung is going to open this up or if it will tightly control what is allowed in. A batch of themes was added while I was in the middle of this review, so hopefully there's more to come. Everything in the theme store is free right now, but there's support for paid content as well. I would pay for a clean AOSP theme. Just throwing that out there, Samsung.

Conclusion

Samsung Galaxy S6

8.3/10

design

9/10

hardware

9/10

software

8/10

performance

8/10

battery

7/10

camera

9/10

The Galaxy S6 is by no means a perfect phone, even if you're not a removable storage purist. The battery life is just average, the phone can be a little slippery, and the software still has a few hiccups. That said, this is the best overall Samsung phone in years, possibly ever.

Sometimes I'm still caught off guard when I pick this device up because the build quality is so out of the ordinary for Android phones. Samsung really brought all its manufacturing experience to bear making a phone with such precise industrial design. It also got the fingerprint sensor right this time—it's actually a time-saver instead of a hassle.

I was hoping the software would be better than it is, but it's not terrible or anything. Samsung's sense of design has improved over time, but it still clings to ideas that are not objectively "good." TouchWiz on the Galaxy S6 is definitely better than all of Samsung's past devices, but parts of it still feel vaguely lazy, and the performance issues on the home screen and in Briefing are unacceptable when you've got an octa-core processor behind the scenes.

The theme store was profoundly boring when I first picked up this phone, but it's already showing signs of life. Samsung just added a dozen new themes, some of which are kind of good. If Samsung opens the store up to third-parties, it could become a great selling point that erases some of TouchWiz's shortcomings. Someone just needs to make a clean AOSP theme and I'll be happy.

Even though it's not perfect, the Galaxy S6 is probably the best phone you can buy right now. It's not for everyone—if you need multiple days of battery life, look elsewhere. Otherwise, this is the phone to beat.

Comments

Daniel Marcus

I still find the S6 design very mediocre, and I have trouble believing the build is much above the flagships from Motorola, Sony, and HTC for example. I'll take the warm curved wood of my Moto X over this flat glass any day. Also, I'm sorry, but seriously, this phone looks like an iPhone. I'm not a fan of the iPhone 6 design language, and I'm no more a fan of it here.

Rahul Vyas

Fanboy's logic:Glass back is only exclusive to Sony and Aluminium back is only exclusive to HTC and Apple and if you are talking about bottom, then go have a look at Galaxy Alpha.

Gideon Waxfarb

I kind of agree with you... screw the glass AND the curved wood... I'll take plastic with a removable battery :P

ClikFire _

looks nothing like an iphone except the bottom but even then thats only becasue of the charging port and headphone jack on the bottom, everything else is completely different, even the sides are actually flat rather than rounded.

Also have you used it in person yet? I used the GS6 at best buy and its design is far from mediocre, sometimes pictures don't do a phone justice.

Daniel Marcus

It's still flat. I find flat, thin phones kind of awkward. Using an iPhone 6 feels like a weird plate. That said, the same thing goes for many of these very flat phones.

ClikFire _

I see your point as I own the Nexus 6 and I really like the slightly curved design, Motorola has made me a phone of their curves. :)

tim242

It resembles an iPhone only from the bottom. But since Samsung had that design first with the Ativ S...

Joery

If there was only a GPE edition of this phone

calmdownbro

GPE is dead.

Francisco Franco

Thank you Sherlock.

POY

Franco uses burn - it's super effective!

Mark Butler

This site needs better kerning.

Arthur Dent

Kern this ...

David Onter

With worse image processing?

ClikFire _

I own a Nexus 6 but I wouldn't want a GPE version to be honest because then the only thing left to like is the build quality, all the camera features, and processing is gone since your using google's awful camera app. I like stock but even I think Google's camera app is the worst, barley any control. I also like multiwindow, the new samsung music player doesn't cut off album art like the Play Music app does which is so annoying, and a few other things I like that would want me to keep it as is.

andy_o

Not only that, but Google's supposedly "seasoned" if not new, camera is severely bugged on the N6, it doesn't show the "manual exposure" (really exposure compensation) button. N5 is fine.

ClikFire _

Well the Nexus 6 actually takes good photos way better than my N5 I'm talking more about the interface.

Maxr1998

Hey, about the album art, I'm currently creating an Xposed module to fix that (and some other things). Look in the Xposed Repo for XGPM at the end of the week (of course considering you're using Xposed..)

Rahul Srivastava

Xposed for Lollipop doesn't support Samsung devices as yet.

Maxr1998

Well, he stated he uses GPM on his Nexus 6

Your Mother

exactly, I dont know why all these people dislike TW when most of them have never used it--just repeating what they've read.

Ryan

I've used it. AOSP looks better, is faster and none of the added features interest me with Touchwiz EXCEPT for the fact that the camera is miles better. Have you used AOSP?

Rahul Srivastava

Yes I have used AOSP, it sure is faster and looks better but TouchWiz has a better camera app and image processing, hands down.
Also the multwindow and multitasking capabilities that TouchWiz possess is far batter than any other iteration or manufacturer skin atop Android.

I have a Note 4 running Android 5.0, not a big fan of TouchWiz myself, all I did was installed Nova launcher, got an icon pack, disabled useless apps and everything looks fab again & feels blazing fast!

TouchWiz has some essentials such as the SPen integration, Multiwindow capabilities, Private Mode and also support for Finger Print recognition which makes me love it.
I could have highly flashed a CM 12 ROM but would have lost the aforesaid features and the trade off is HUGE.

Ryan

I guess we're only really disagreeing on how we rank certain features then since we both think AOSP looks way better and is faster. Personally, I will admit, the camera is important and if I had a phone with a fingerprint scanner I'd want that to work. Most of the other changes i don't personally use though. What I'm saying then is why can't we have an almost completely AOSP experience with just those improvements, instead of Samsung's ugly garish colours they insist on using with the current implementation of TW.

Rahul Srivastava

Oh yes, i entirely agree with you, Samsung should bake in the goodies in a completely stockish experience.

Can't you install an app from the Play Store for the camera? Does Samsung have something proprietary?

Ryan

Well you can get all sorts of apps for the camera but they don't have the same access as Samsung (or any other manufacturer) so they never produce as good quality pictures. I'm not sure exactly why, but they're never as good, that's why if you flash an AOSP ROM the camera is degraded.

Felix

"..installed Nova launcher, got an icon pack, disabled useless apps and.."
wow.. how could you say TW is good, when you must do all that to use your phone?
Simply buy a nexus and be happy.

mma173

Man, Google's Android will never be a finished product. There will always be annoyances here and there because Google is being run by nerds -- people who cannot understand what normal people want/do.

Obsidian_22

When will any OS be a finished product? Hardware gets better so the software has to change to take advantage of that. Google produces an excellent OS... Aosp is great but phone Manufacturers refuse to leave it Vanilla and just skin the hell out of it. Moto has come the closest to Vanilla Android and LG actually got way closer with the G3 but until that happens we'll never get the best of both worlds. The quickness of Aosp with the hardware/kernel integration and software to run it from the manufacturers. If they kept it Vanilla we'd all get software updates so much sooner and the phone's memory/cpu wouldn't be bogged down by the added fluff.

mma173

IOS is a finished product in my opinion. Every detail in it is being taken care of; and While it lacks the flexibility of Android, it simply works.

On the other hand, AOSP or GPE Android looks like a WIP (work in progress)...

Well, I was going to provide examples but if you are a regular visitor of this site, you would have already read articles about buggy parts in the system, inconsistency, and incomplete implementation of some features.

It's not the Exynos that makes the S6 so smooth. It's the UFS 2.0 storage tech. And yes, the Nexus 5, 6 and Z3 do stutter and lag at random places, which was the annoying part about Android phones. The S6 is the first Android phone to get rid of random stuttering all together.

[S]unjay

Every phone will lag and stutter, even the S6 will.

meir cohen

AGREE.

Ali Abidrahmani

Heh really?I love android but getting rid of stuttering is something every one claims since android 4.0
I wouldn't hold my breath.Because even iOS lags in certain situations in my experience

Jesse

Exactly. Decided to try iOS with an iPhone 6 Plus because of the bragged about "optimized and lag free experience" but its very far from that. I get many random crashes and lags. Everything will have hiccups....

joseph carmine nero

Z2 here.never lags.but ofcourse depends on how you keep your phone.like some noobs always leave facebook and crap apps running that is a different story.and about touchwiz lagging.My S4 never lagged.it was slower than Xperia UI but did not lag

meir cohen

You so wrong....the s6 is lagy too.

joseph carmine nero

you can disable those useless stuff in every new android phone.disabling is not a samsung feature.

tim242

Well if that bothers you, Nova Launcher is a click away. Not a single hiccup.

[S]unjay

I don't use 3rd party launchers. I only use the default launcher. I prefer the TouchWiz launcher over Nova. I hope to try out the new TouchWiz soon to see how much I like it.

Cellarzar

Yes. They. Do.

[S]unjay

Then the phone has flawed software. A normal phone should not do that.

reggjoo

Not true, the iphone(which is supposed to be buttery smooth) has slowdowns too, no phone is immune, be it software, that's not optimized, or hardware,that's not configured, etc.. If this were true, google, or apple, would just leave their current version as is.

[S]unjay

That's what I said.

Jesse

I'm currently on an iPhone 6 Plus and i get weird lags and hiccups here and there.. so what? rofl. Why do people expect everything to be 100% perfect 100% of the time? In an ideal world, sure. But ideal =/= reality.

Well its just some newly released software things, they'll get fixed for sure. Every software have these, even the nexus 6 and the iPhones had performance issues at start.

[S]unjay

That is true. I'm sure that it will be fixed.

Total Faith

It still uses Android 5.0.2 ;) Not the newest Android 5.1 with HUGE performance increases and strong bug fixes ;)

ClikFire _

Your right. Plus Apple and Google were introducing things they have never really done before lollipop and iOS 8 were both big updates.

meir cohen

Try it yourself. The s6 is lagy.

Arthur Dent

*laggy

meir cohen

Lagggy :)

Guest

on an iPhone 6 Plus and i get weird random lags here and there..... so what? rofl....

[S]unjay

That's exactly my point. Every phone will lag and stutter, even the most powerful computer will at some point.

Kurama91

it would be the BEST GPE phone ever.

Your Mother

maybe down the road, who knows. it does not benefit Samsung to make GPEs though so dont hold your breath and stop reading everyone's opinion about TW and go explore it for yourself. personally I think its the best thing out there if you want a host of useful features that no other phone has.

Guest

▆▆✈▆▆✈▆▆✈▆▆
android GIVE you Cute0nlineErningSources ... last week I bought a great Maserati from earning $6163 this-past/4 weeks and over 10-k last month . with-out any doubt it's the most financialy rewarding Ive ever done . I actually started seven months/ago and pretty much straight away started to bring in more than $83, per-hour .

The biggest problem with GPE phones is that there was simply no reason for them to exist. They were always the same price or (in the case of the One M8) more than the regular OEM counterparts, and didn't have half the software features. Those phones existed to serve one type of person...the person who wanted stock Android on better hardware than Nexus phones were providing at the time. The problem with this, of course, is that the people who would want this also tend to be the type of people who want things cheap and love to bitch and moan about the cost of devices (look what happened with the Nexus 6 came out and it sold for a normal price).

So, basically, you're shelling out $650 for a phone with half the features of its OEM counterpart just so you can say that you're getting updates before everyone else. I loved my GPE phones (I owned a GS4, Z Ultra, and Moto G at different points in time), but in hindsight, the value proposition just wasn't there, and I think Google and the OEMs both knew that.

LoopPay is coming out this summer, allegedly. So in America, we can probably expect the needed OTA 2 months after the rest of the world.

Defenestratus

Ah ok.

tim242

It is only launching in South Korea, and the US. So, keep your hate to a minimum.

Arthur Dent

Why so defensive? It is very much a reality that updates in the US take a long fucking time, due to carrier apathy and spite.

tim242

He has made several catty comments about Samsung in these comments. It's bordering trolling.

Jeff Beck

I still haven't handled it in person, but in pictures it still does not look all that premium.

Corey Watford

It def feels premium, def a solid phone ( had one this past week)

R

In person, it DOES feel premium.

tim242

Just wait til you hold it...

Daniel Walsh

I held it, the Z3 feels better and looks better.

Pixel

I have a weird feeling that Google is going to announce a GPE Galaxy S6 in I/O 2015, like they did in I/O 2013 with the Galaxy S4.

Corey Watford

I have a feeling as GPE are no longer even on the play store, GPE branded phones are dead

Adi

damn! I soo wanna buy it as my next phone but then Touchwiz...I'll probably buy a Nexus, I know.

Anmol Malhotra

Lol. It has almost same design as iPhone 6. You suckers hated it's design soo much and now you giving it 9/10?
Maybe a paid review. Good going AP.
Samsung copied no one cares. Samsung has bendgate no one cares. Great great great!

jak_341

iPhone is still setting the bar for all other phones to be compared.

Toss3

Depends on what you want to do with your phone. The iPhone is surely enough a great phone, but still somewhat limited compared to android.

David Onter

Not reeeaaly...

kai

What bendgate? You wanna equate a glass edged phone with an aluminum edged one!
At least, you can't break the S6 Edge with basic hand force like the iphone 6 plus, which is by the way the most pathetic clone of the Note.

There are many features unique with the S6 and other Android phones even though iverge, techcrunch, cnet, engadget, and other big tech sites ignore them because they are not on the revolutionary iphone yet.

RyanWhitwam

"almost same design as iPhone 6" - In places, they are somewhat similar.

no man, really fuck you. i can only imagine how pissed i'd be writing such an in-depth review only for a cunt like yourself to come and brand it dishonest. again, fuck you.

Anmol Malhotra

Lol. Don't cry like a child that everyone will like your review. ;)
I'll brand it dishonest now too. 9/10 for design? Review it again. :)
Again and always, fuck you.

Andy Roid

No, fuck you. Someone goes to the effort of writing an in-depth insightful review and some immature internet nerd accuses them of taking bribes and says they "suck". Seriously, fuck you.

Arthur Dent

You come off sounding like a cunty, angry little bitch. Can't handle that Samsung actually released a quality phone? Is that blowing your mind and upsetting your fragile little fanboy mind?

RockDrops

How mature. His comment sucked, but you really don't do yourself any favors by responding like that.

Sean Lumly

Agreed. Not to mention inviting similar quality commentary in the comment section.

Anmol Malhotra

"In places, they are somewhat similar." - Copied from Apple. This looks better.

" I don't recall saying this. I do not speak for all human beings." - I never said you said it.

"Maybe a paid review. Good going AP" - Obviously you guys won't ever say this so there's no point in it. And one more thing - FUCK YOU.

"Not really." - #bendgate2? Where were you when this happened? Grounded? Hehe. I can understand.

Deckard_Cain

Don't feed the trolls. I would love to live in the imaginary land where this phone is a copy of Apple's.

RockDrops

He can write, but Ryan is a real douchebag. He's the only AP writer whose personality most reminds me of a catheter.

RyanWhitwam

I remind you of a thin plastic tube that can be inserted into a duct, channel, or vessel?

Varun

Samsung copied? Better check out Samsung ativ S which came in 2012

David Onter

If you really belive that Samsung has a #Bendgate because of these machine-tests you're an idiot. Just my personal opinion.

Arthur Dent

Except that the design is very significantly different from iPhone 6, in so many areas, with the exception of the bottom edge. You fail, hard, douchebag.

ekr

It has the best camera, the best screen, the best processor, and the best internal parts.
I am not a fan of Touchwiz but the phone, to me, felt faster than my 5.1 Nexus 6 in scrolling and animations. I can disable samsung apps and install the google now launcher and voila.

Sidenote: the S6 kinda reminds me of the S3 and S4 when Samsung was crushing CraApple.

Aaron

I love how the users say "just put a launcher on it and you'll forget about TouchWiz". But can you change the ugly and not-fluid-scrolling Settings interface?

Sidenote: wait until you perform a system update and Samshit has never disappoint their users because Samshit has sworn to mess up their phone in every update they pushed.

ekr

Like Google messed up the Android 5.0 update? or 5.0.1? or 5.0.2? Many have been complaining of lag, crashes, and slow animations yet that took 6 months after launch to fix; assuming 5.1 fixed everything. Touchwiz is not the best but it is also not the awful thing people here make it look like.

Aaron

Yes, we have to admit that Google failed hard on Lollipop. That's sucks. Even Android 5.1 still has memory leak issue. Those who don't face it probably only use their phone to do normal calling and WhatsApp. It's easy to reproduce the memory leak and easily shoot up to 1.4 GB system RAM. Many said that the main cause is because the runtime transition from Dalvik to ART. The team is having a hard time on that.

pfmiller

Don't blame ART, I never had any problems with ART in Kit Kat.

Aaron

The awkward moment when ART on KitKat is faster than ART on Lollipop by default.

David Onter

A lot of the problems like App crashes, general slowdowns and rapid battery consumption only occur if you upgrade via OTA and don't make a clean flash (applies to all the LG, Samsung and HTC handsets).

I've never experienced any problems with Lollipop (5.0.1). My M8 runs better and faster than ever, has awesome battery life (two days with moderate use) and is almost perfect for me, software-wise. I absolutely didn't expect it to make such a big difference to KK :)

Not gonna work. AP has sadly turned into a site full of people who admire nothing but stock. Put stock android on a humidifier and they will love it. Make a premium phone but no stock=no love no matter what.

RyanWhitwam

Did you actually read the review?

leo

The comment was not about the review.

Nick

Oh I see, commenting on what AP has become with out actually reading their latest post(s?).

Andy Roid

When he referred to what AP has become, he was talking about us commenters down here, not the staff or the articles

Guest

You're an idiot, and dumbfucks like you are the ones he was addressing

POY

Lol this is the comment section, we don't have to read the OP or give links to back up our claims

ProductFRED

I know you were talking to him, but I've read your review and other sites' (e.g. The Verge's review). They are generally glowing, and praise Samsung for toning down Touchwiz in all of the right ways. My comment was about those who think anything with a third-party skin, especially Touchwiz, is garbage. Not your review.

senor_heisenberg

Well, TouchWiz and some other skins are garbage. Just not as trashy add they used to be. My advice to you and others who feel the same as you would be to stop being so concerned about what others think as it makes you look more ridiculous than those you don't agree with.

joseph carmine nero

he is talking about purist trolls in comments

Cat Astrophy

Did you actually bother to consider how huge a lack of removable battery AND lack of SD card slot is for a flagship that's had it for years?

sd

Did you actually understand his comment?

Jeff Beck

Wait, there is a humidifier with stock Android?! Link please! APK!!! SOON BACKANSWER!

Arthur Dent

Except that the Galaxy S6 looks fucking great. This from a current N5 owner. So there's that.

ClikFire _

I am tired of the "Only Stock!" comments from people, I like stock and my Nexus 6 but other OEMs do bring some things I like better than stock to the table. I tried out the GS6 at Best Buy after owning many Galaxy Devices years ago and touchwiz finally feels good for once.

[S]unjay

/r/androidcirclejerk

jonathan3579

I fucking hated the Note 4 with a passion... But I love this new trimmed down TouchWiz. Once the ability to create themes opens up, it'll get better for me. (I hate their icons but don't want to throw another launcher on there.)

ClikFire _

I agree thats what kept me from the note 4, tocuhwiz on the GS6 is actually good for once too bad about battery though.

tim242

Why wouldn't you want to use a launcher? Nova is the first thing I download to set up a new phone.

jonathan3579

Just a personal choice. I tried the GNL and it looked like absolute garbage. I paid for Nova but I don't really ever download it, lol.

tim242

Nova is the best thing since...ever! I love my customization options and GESTURES!

jonathan3579

I'll have to give it another try. It's been a while since I last used it. I'm curious what (if anything) has changed.

You can join the beta and use it. I've been using it for months and it works fine for me.

Arthur Dent

<3 Nova

joseph carmine nero

not really trimmed down.they removed some apps and added some crappy microsoft blotware

jonathan3579

How is that not trimmed down? If you trim down on fat, you're removing it. The Microsoft apps aren't for everyone but they're hardly crappy.

joseph carmine nero

well we can download them easily if we want.i don't need them prinstalled AKA blotware

invinciblegod

Going to wait for the note 5 because I've resolved to try out a gigantophone next. As a side note, they should somehow skip the numbers so that the note series have the same number as the galaxy S series (Apple had that chance and they screwed it up by calling it the ipad mini 3 instead of the ipad mini 2+ so they can't have an ipad mini3 and ipad air 3 this year).

kadtrrer

cut down on more bloatware I would be interested. apart from that I am impressed with its hardware performance not so much with its software performance

Derik Taylor

My sentiments exactly. Bloatware is a very easy way to keep me away from buying a phone. For that matter, I don't mind if there is bloatware as long as I can uninstall it.

This seems like an impressive device, but if it is riddled with bloatware that cannot be removed, I may simply overlook it.

tim242

Uninstalling bloatware would not free up space, as it on the system partition.

iso

What android phone does not have bloatware?

Carrier apps? Even Nexus phones come with those preinstalled.
Not needed apps? I guarantee you not all preinstalled Google apps are needed either.

Moto X is another example of fewer bloatware. bloatware doesnt mean just apps but bloated Android itself like touchwiz.

Robabobbob

Nexus phones in the UK don't, in fact few phones over here do at all now. US carriers suck balls! Can't believe they make you pay to receive calls!!

Gideon Waxfarb

Does it come with Gmail? I don't use Gmail, so... bloatware.

Robabobbob

Well I was talking about carrier crapware. But yes of course it comes with Gapps like gmail but you can uninstall it. I don't mind if OEM put stuff on their phone so long as you can remove it.

Gideon Waxfarb

I have a Moto X (2013) - I can't uninstall any of the Gapps I don't use ...

POY

Wait, you pay to receive calls in US?

David Onter

They cut down 40% in total.

kadtrrer

I know but that 40% is not enough

Narciso Neto

Great review Ryan! I would give a 9 to that Phone easily :)

namesib

A dongle that is susceptible to being broken off, draws more power (in my experience) and prevents charging is very far from a 'solution'. The disproportionate price increments and limited availability of the highest capacity models is also a problem. Removing microSD support was not in the consumer's interest.

bm

Honestly, the most majority of customers have long abandoned SD cards. Get over it

Fatal1ty_93_RUS

Speak for yourself

Robabobbob

Not according to the last poll here but then that is a survey of phone geeks not "normal users". Personally I've not worried about storage for years on my phones but I'm not everybody.

Oh man this link is perfect. An article by Ryan Whitwam's own team with a poll proving (granted it's a bit old but I've no doubt a new one would yield the same results) that consumers demand removeable storage and he just tosses it aside in his article as if no one really cares so let's not factor it into the score.

vbv

Not average consumers. A small minority of the market - people obsessed with Android (which is they visit AP daily). If think polls on this site reflect the average Android user's opinion, then you're idiot.

vbv

*why they

Andy Roid

not true.

Julie Ankrom

Nope. As long as people like to carry large numbers of photos/music/books on their device, people like me will be waiting for ever-larger-storage SD cards. The cloud and wifi are nice but they are not everywhere.

EDIT: also podcasts. Forgot about those. RadioLab FTW.

tim242

And if your phone is stolen, someone has your SD card...

CoreRooted

Encrypt your SD card. Problem solved.

tim242

Yeah, like I want to enter a password every time I want to access a file...

CoreRooted

You don't. SD card encryption doesn't work that way. When you are in the OS, the files are accessible. Outside of the device, the card is worthless. As a side note, your device should be encrypted also. If you are concerned about your device and it's contents being stolen, encryption should be second highest on your list for protecting it. Number one should be a strong password or pin.

tim242

I don't encrypt my device, due to performance issues as of now. I was using a pattern lock, but now using fingerprint on the S6.

CoreRooted

Step in the right direction at least... All my devices are encrypted. Yes, performance suffers a bit on some devices, but knowing that my data is safe is more important than waiting an extra second or so for something to load. Not that I have anything to hide, per se; I just don't want my data easily accessible.

POY

Hahaha no microSD is good to backup to, in case you drop your phone in beer and your photo die

John

If you drop your phone in beer, your SDcard (in your phone) will also fall into the beer.

namesib

And people like you are the reason Android is become increasingly restrictive in both hardware and software. Let's also get rid of USB-OTG and strive to prevent root because the majority of consumers don't make use of these functions. No thanks--if I wanted an iPhone I would have bought one. Why even tech-savvy consumers are in favour of fewer functions (whilst flagship phone prices are rising) is truly beyond me.

Cat Astrophy

Um, absolutely not?

tim242

I abandoned my SD card when I got the Note 4. I didn't like the idea of someone having my SD card, if my phone was stolen. I just bought the 64GB S6, and was prepared to not use an SD card.

Ryuga

Like the design but not the hideous camera bump behind.

Mattnatt

After reading this 1) I'm never signing another 2 year contract and 2) I think I'll hold on to my S4 for a little longer.

tim242

I loved the S4! I hated the S5. This S6 is like having the S4 again, but better!

NoldorElf

If one there was a version that was waterproof like the Active, had an expandable storage, and a removable battery.

That and I want a a GPE edition because I'm not the biggest fan of TouchWiz. GP is unlikely, but an S6 Active is definitely possible I guess.

The other big problem with this phone is that the Exynos SOC will make it hard to develop an AOSP based ROMs (historically CM mod has been easily ported to the Snapdragon variants of Samsung's phones, but since the Note 2, the Exynos phones have lagged development wise).

By far the biggest issue with this phone is that the battery life is not great and the battery is not removable. That and the glass back. The speakers could be better too. Otherwise, this is a great phone. Top of the line performance, camera is pretty good, and screen quality.

David Onter

It's coming if you believe certain rumors...

jonathan3579

Do you own the phone? Battery life isn't bad at all. I'm getting 5 hours SOT over 20 hours. That is pretty damn good for this tiny battery and QHD screen. I'm in the middle of what some are getting.

InfDaMarvel

Wow they didnt give the thing a 9/10?

tim242

This is AP. They hate Samsung.

RyanWhitwam

Or, and try to stay with me here, we give things an honest review regardless of who makes them.

tim242

Meanwhile, your fellow writer is making catty remarks about Samsung at every turn in the comments.

Arthur Dent

*writer

tim242

Are you blind? That's what it says. Screenshot below of your reply.

Arthur Dent

Uh, ok.

tim242

That was over two hours ago. I got lost in what I was typing and corrected it immediately.

CoreRooted

LOL... I still see it as "righter" too... ;) hahaha I *almost* called you out on it earlier, but I had to get into a meeting.

Trooper311

Interesting wall.

Julie Ankrom

Ow, my eyes!

Brendan

Remember when everyone was all pissed that the M9 had slightly worse battery? Yeah, me too. But I don't see anyone up in arms here...

RyanWhitwam

To be fair, the M9 also has a 1080p screen and a bigger battery than last year. That ain't right.

Gideon Waxfarb

They're just distracted over how shiny the thing is. People will overlook just about anything if the phone is pretty. The M9 doesn't have the same level of shiny this year, so ...

I, for one, am not exactly happy to hear about the battery life, either. The Nexus 6 has a lot of problems, but it does consistently get me through a day (barring some weird behavior, which does occasionally happen). None of the A57 chipsets seem to have especially good power consumption characteristics, unfortunately.

tim242

Battery life is hard to test. Everybody uses their phones differently. I have had my Verizon S6 since yesterday. I got a little over 5 hours screen on time with my first charge. That gets close to my Note 4 time.

The graphics benchmarks for the other phones are lower because of the 1440p screens. The M9 is pushing *way* less pixels. The M9 does not have better graphics performance overall. Run a test at 720p so there's no interpolation, and you'll see completely different results.

Arthur Dent

SO the question is, will most games try and render at 1440p on these devices, or do most games render frames at a lower resolution? I honestly don't know.

I'd guess there are graphics settings, as with PCs. 1440p is probably fine, but you can always go down to 1080p or 720p if there's a problem. The chips are pretty capable, considering their size.

jonathan3579

Gotta say, I've been a Nexus fanboy for the longest time and wasn't sure I would really like the S6 Edge... I was wrong. I absolutely love it!

Konstantinos Pap

S 6 in Greek translates to " ΕΣ ΕΞΙ" --> Ε-ΣΕΞΙ --> E-Sexy.

Ex S2 user and I now have a Nexus 4. You did well Samsung.

Daniel

I too like using the finger print sensor instead of smart lock except when it comes to handing my wife the phone in the car. So far, the car is the only trusted device (even though I have a Moto 360 ready and willing). Anyone have any better ideas?

Also, I haven't figured out how to navigate the silence/vibrate/do-not-disturb functions. What am I supposed to do? Does do-not-disturb silence or stop notifications (a la stock Lollipop)? How can I get it to stop notifications for a set amount of time or until the next alarm? Is it only a window of time? What about temporary times?

Also, the battery seems to be pretty bad, but I'm at a desk all day so it isn't that much of a problem for me. It might be for others.

Matthew Fry

Just have her train her finger on the device.

Praneeth Kancherla

How about giving a score to HTC One M9 in the conclusion? It would be good for comparison.

Chad Gauthier

If you use another launcher the wallpaper will remain stationary. I'm using Action Launcher 3 on mine, and it is especially awesome with the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge's edge.

ClikFire _

most launchers give you an option to have a moving or stationary wall.

CoreRooted

OOOHHH!!! Question: Does the edge panel register touches and swipes in AL3? Can you swipe along the edges and get AL3 to do QD/QP? I've been thinking about writing a couple of overlay apps to take advantage of the edges, but I haven't been able to find anything about the touch responsiveness of the edge panels themselves.

Biff Wonsley

Can you install the Google Now Launcher on this phone? Just ignorant & curious. For the stock-obsessed that would seem like a solution.

andy

The Verge rated an android phone higher than AP!!! Am I still on planet Earth ?

ClikFire _

lol. I have to give the Verge Credit they have been doing better lately, they actually spent 3/4 of their Apple watch review talking about how horribly clunky the UI was and how apps would take forever to open. They even gave it a lower rating then the Moto 360.

Arthur Dent

The Verge is a rag, regardless of their score on this. That place has gone downhill horribly.

ClikFire _

True. Too bad because the production quality in terms of editing and video quality is some of the best around.

andy

Yes, the apple watch review webpage is the future of webpages. Simply amazing.

LockesKidney

David Pierce left and so did Toplasky

ClikFire _

David left too? Where did he go?

LockesKidney

Wired

Renaldi I.

To their reader's misfortune...D:

Seriously, how daft must one be to find perfection in lackingness and hints of a revolution in something that doesn't live up to its price tag?
[Case in point: Wired's take on the new Macbook, a la David]

Marcelove

You meant iVerge... ;-)

Ali Abidrahmani

Well,in the review they say apple watch is "the most capable smartwatch" and "easily the nicest smartwatch" yet they gave it 7/10.
Moto 360 is 8.1/10.
Wtf?!

ClikFire _

I agree they definitely still have bias their conclusion on the review definitely contradicted their actual review.

RyanWhitwam

The scales are not necessarily equivalent. There is no universal smartphone rating system, and there's a lot of personal opinion in these scores anyway. It's not exactly scientific.

Cat Astrophy

Especially when you choose to leave out entire cons to skew your judgement.

People want to read a review where you can factually discuss how certain features are very popular and demanded. Not how Ryan Whitwam uses his phone and which features he as an individual doesn't care about (like the exceptionally controversial removal of swappable battery and SD storage). You literally need to add "for Ryan Whitwam's personal needs in a phone" at the end of the article title. Granted that's not as catchy so a disclaimer in bold before the article begins would work too.

Believe it or not, you CAN review something like technology with little opinion about it. It's not art so it's not subjective.

Howard Denerim

Well said Cat! Well said!
Don't really get to read decent objective reviews anymore on AP nowadays.

Kijiji

"you can factually discuss how certain features are very popular and demanded"

He mentioned they were missing. He also mentioned that removing them allowed for the new body construction. The facts stop there.

That's all the facts you need to know if you want to buy the device.

What's not a fact, is that these are very popular and demanded features. Unless you point to a study of how popular or demanded, or some hard numbers.

I also don't believe a score should be affected by things missing. It should score the features available. I should be able to see, given the features in the phone, how good are they.

It's really easy to know what feature you want, so when buying a phone, if you want an SD Card, you already know the S6 is not the phone for you, even if it was scored 100%. Where as, if he scored the phone lower because of missing features, but I didn't care, I could get the impression that the features it does have are badly implemented.

fdg

What a dumbfuck. "the exceptionally controversial removal of swappable battery and SD storage" is important to you, moron. Just because you personally care about it doesnt mean other people give a shit.

Whether someone needs 32 or 128 GB is definitely subjective. Whether someone gives a shit about being able to remove the battery is also subjective. Every thing about purchasing any product is subjective.

Cat Astrophy

It's a removed feature. Less options is automatically bad.

PersianMan

Thanks Ryan. Is there "trusted face" in Smart lock?

Erin

I need to know what that wallpaper is in the first picture, would love to have it on my phone!

ClikFire _

I agree. I hate it when in reviews the reviewer never links their wallpaper because its usually one I can never find.

RyanWhitwam

Guys, I've linked to it three times in the comments already ;)

CoreRooted

You need to wrap it in <em style="text-decoration: blink;">[link]</em>... We can't see it if it isn't blinking!!! lol ;)

The camera on this thing is incredible I used it at best buy and the quality was like DSLR. I seriously don't understand why people think the iphone camera is so great its good but definitely not the best.

flosserelli

That is because until just recently, iphone cameras were the best.

ClikFire _

I disagree, I think they were still overrated.

ChrisM40

Never trust reviews. Personally I trust real results, and I see plenty of terrible, and surprisingly few good iPhone images on social media. Give it a bit of time, and a steady hand the iphone works very well, candid shots? No so much.

[S]unjay

I doubt that the quality was like a DSLR but it is good.

ClikFire _

I meant DSLR like. Honestly it looked close to a canon t3i is some of its shots (not the poor shots he posted here) which is more a entry Kevel DSLR buy still impressive for such a small lens.

Jack

The Nexus fanboys will crying into their cornflakes.

Arthur Dent

N5 user here seriously looking at S6 for next phone (if I decide not to wait for Note 5). So yeah, not so much, bro.

UB

I use stock Android and I am fully aware of what I am missing from TouchWiz. I actually like a lot of TouchWiz stuff, like having your contacts and gallery from all social networks merged. I don't mind TouchWiz.

That said, I still prefer stock.

ChrisM40

No they wont. In reality they should have been doing so for years, but haven't started, so its fair to say they are delusional enough to not do it this round either.

Arthur Dent

Lol, the hate is funny. I love it when people are convinced that others are delusional due to different likes, and that their perception of reality is the only allowable one.

Was happy with my N5, will be happy with S6 (or Note 5).

ChrisM40

No its just that the nexus is second rate crap.

CoreRooted

*sigh* If you are going to play Sammy fanboy, at least get your sentence (and pop culture reference) correct; "The Nexus fanboys will BE crying into their WHEATIES."

Also, why would Nexus fans be crying at all? If nothing else, the technology in the S6 will be a great reference for future Nexus devices. There will most likely also be some great AOSP ROMs that will come out for it. So, your statement is completely inaccurate. Points for trying though.

Jack

^^rattled^^

james fuston

Spec sheet part refers to the CPU as having A53 and A75 (instead of A57) cores

ytymish

OK, but it's a phone.. is it any good at actually being a phone? How's the reception and sound quality? So many reviews seem to completely miss the primary purpose.. well sometimes primary purpose of these devices.

Jack

The primary function of a smartphone is certainly not making phonecalls. Have you heard of a thing called in the internet?

flosserelli

This may shock you, but some people must use their phone to make phone calls. So call quality is important to them.

fdg

What is this thing you call "in the internet"? Oh, wise one. And why do people always complain about carriers and range if they do not need to make phonecalls? WiFi not cutting it?

Matthew Fry

Sameish as everything else. Non-HD voice sucks. HD voice is good.

frhow

I agree because Sammy use to be notorious for putting inferior radios in their phones...

Sergii Pylypenko

Get yourself Nokia brickphone you hipster.

John

Get yourself some manners, dickhead.

cryosx

the responses you got are kinda ridculous

Jeff

"Samsung has slowly but surely erased all the shortcomings of AMOLED technology" -- does burn-in not exist any more? I'm still skittish about AMOLED after living through a year and a half of GNex burn-in.

CoreRooted

AFAIK, that's been fixed for at least a year now.

EH101

It's not completely gone but is almost non-existent in my S5. I imagine the S6 is probably a bit better in this regard. I had a GNex also so I've seen the worst burn in you can think of, these newer devices are much better in this area.

Matthew Fry

Fantastic device (the s6 edge). It doesn't get warm while wireless charging for me.
Complaints:

- 2 random reboots so far in 4 days.
- You cannot turn off the capacitive button backlight. It doesn't matter if the display goes down to 10 nits, the damned capacitive buttons will blind you every time you touch the display.
- The capacitive button backlights bleed into the display.
- The floating text message reply is cool but why is it limited to 160 characters?
- There's definitely something wrong with the bluetooth. It randomly disconnects and the first time I connected it to my car stereo it output full volume static till I turned bluetooth off.
- Auto brightness won't go to the lowest brightness. It's still very bright in the dark.
- My screen looks lightly abraised all over. You can't tell while the display is on but at certain angles it is noticeable.

The auto brightness behavior has always been this way. I don't believe the sensor can detect levels with enough granularity to use the lowest brightness level effectively. The abrasion I'm not sure what exactly you're describing.

I just checked, and I cannot see the scratches in my office. The last time I saw it was in the sunlight. Maybe I'm seeing something reflected from the internals.

tim242

You sound like such a butthurt fanboy.

G.Crisci

have you tried to take brightness under the 30% with auto active to see if go to the lowest brightness?

Awayze

You wouldn't have those issues with an iPhone, Sony or HTC. Stop being a Samsheep.

Matthew Fry

Go jump in a lake.

Total Faith

Wise words.

Arthur Dent

"Go jump in a lake."

I guess that's a bit nicer than "Die in a fire", as I might have told him.

Total Faith

iSheep ;)

Awayze

I actually have a Z3. Wouldn't buy a Samsung device.

Total Faith

Bit done call others sheeps, okay? ;)

Awayze

I said sheep because Samsung make awful Androids yet people complain after buying fully aware the Galaxy's aren't perfect regardless of the "high" end hardware and they have the nerve to call Apple users iSheep. My Z3 is better.

Total Faith

It is probably not. But I like it that you are not an iPhone user :)

Daniel Walsh

Z3 FTW! It was the best phone available, but now the S6/S6 Edge is better.

tim242

I hate not being able to turn the capacitive lights off! Why would they do that???? The only way to disable them, is to use power save mode. I don't know how bad it affects performance though.

Biff Wonsley

If your screen is scratched, you're apparently not the only buyer with this problem. Do a search & you'll see. Unfortunate.

Arthur Dent

So is there an unbranded S6 available in the US? I want an S6, but I do not want AT&T's shit on it, nor do I want to be beholden to AT&T for updates.

No. You can attempt to buy an unlocked LTE version that would come from elsewhere in the world, but I'm not sure what the geo-lock status is / exactly which LTE bands are supported. Samsung basically seems to have a deal with the carriers giving them distribution exclusivity, apart from an occasional developer edition. I do not believe Samsung has ever sold a flagship Galaxy S phone unlocked and unbranded in the US.

Arthur Dent

Damn. It also pisses me off to no end that AT&T is wildly overpricing theirs compared to VZW, will be bootloader locked, etc.

Time to compare T-Mobile S6 band support with AT&T then, maybe that will be an option. Guessing TMO is bootloader unlocked, so probably can at least root and disable carrier stuff.

KlausWillSeeYouNow

Or, you could just get T-Mobile.

Arthur Dent

If the service was comparable to AT&T here, I would do so immediately. But alas, such is not the case.

KlausWillSeeYouNow

:-(

Don't lose faith.

Total Faith

Wise words...

CoreRooted

In my area, AT&T has actually gotten even worse service-wise. I live in Phoenix and downtown (and areas just a couple miles north), I have dead zones. Data speeds have gotten worse also. The only service that is better here is VZW. TMO and Sprint are both 10x worse in the areas that I frequent.

G.Crisci

-this conflict about Sansung copying Apple is absurd -
when someone like Apple make a design of his phone so generic and simple how can someone else make something of different?
we are speaking of an object than is a parallelepiped!
you can't make it as a sphere because everything else will resemble an iphone, if Apple didn't characterize his phone: is Apple business and risk they are taking to be so generic, but I understand them because if they can call their company APPLE... (like the fruits for the persons that are so used to listen the name that didn't remember that apple primarily is a fruit!)

So please STOP saying the world is coping Apple because if making something different means to deeply characterize a phone, like HTC and some others have done, this is good for them but not bad for someone that don't want to particularly characterize his phones.

Bryan Pizzuti

Should be a great device once Nova Launcher is installed.

tim242

It is! When I got my Verizon S6 yesterday, Nova was the first app downloaded.

Total Faith

You can change your TW with the help of the new theme engine ;)

tim242

I don't care for the themes available now. I hope some good ones come along. My main issue with TW is the awful launcher. Nova takes care of that. The only thing that I would want to change otherwise, is the notification shade. But, eve it's not horrible.

Total Faith

That's what I meant.

Daniel Walsh

How do you like it?

tim242

It's very nice. Coming from the Note 4, my small hands definitely appreciate it! With Nova, you vary know TW is present. Everything is all lollipoped up.

dude

It looks like a good phone, I might buy it one year from now if it had a Google edition or AOSP some rom for it. But then there are other good phones coming out too.

John M. Kuchta

One huge flaw the review completely ignores is that Samsung broke the smart lock feature.

I'll add that when smart lock is enabled, and your trusted device is paired, or you're in the trusted location, simply waking the phone should present you with the launcher or whatever app you had open. It shouldn't require any swiping, either on the lock icon or on the fingerprint sensor.

Rather have the M9, camera is worth sacrificing for better everything else.

saf1927

Weren't Samsung mocking Apple in one of their ads regarding the "heahphone jack on the bottom"? lol

AllPurposeRadio

Minor gripe what benefit is it that multiview is always on and can't be toggled off? Upgrade still flipfloping on Note4 or S6

Dustin Mingo

Long-press back button on Galaxies to remove the multiview tab if that's what you're talking about. That's been the way since the S3, and Samsung is a creature of habit ;)

AllPurposeRadio

No I know that...but there's always been a quick button to turn multiview either on or completely off if desired. As I understand multiview is always active on the S6 and is no option to completely turn off.

Dustin Mingo

Mind I sell them but don't use them, but in the 4 and 5, when I long-pressed the back key it would switch it off in the quick-settings toggle as well as removing the tab. Same thing to turn it back on, which turned on the toggle and the tab. I've always been satisfied with this, but is that not completely off?

Bimbo

Could use Pixel Battery Saver to help with the battery life at the cost of screen sharpness. Long Live Super AMOLED Displays!

Total Faith

AcDisplay works just fine as well! ;)

Kurama91

Great Review Man! I like it.

Sam Del Valle

Launcher a problem?

No worries, bro.

-installs Google Now Launcher-

There we go. Much better. :)

Total Faith

The launcher it self doesn't make the full system UI look beautiful. You need to change with the help of Root privileges.

Sam Del Valle

Tbh. I enjoy the system UI on here. It's not great like stock but its not horrid like past versions either.

I'm tempted to actually buy the S6 (Nexus users don't crucify me)

Total Faith

I will do the same. Most likely, because of the 14 nm chipset ;)

Bob G

Don't worry. If they do, I'll be right there alongside you lol.

Thinking of moving from my Nexus to the Edge.

GJV

The built in theme engine does re-do the UI. Samsung just opened theming up to third parties so expect some viable options. Inevitably, somebody will make an AOSP theme.

Neel

Holy crap that camera is amazing. The detail captured is unreal. Almost DSLR quality in those pictures

joseph carmine nero

Title should be samsungs most over hyped and over rated phone ever.yes it is better than HTC M9 but so are many other phones.so what?where is the magic only reviewers can see?

JeanClaude

Coming from years of Stock, I actually really enjoy TouchWiz. I find Briefing way more interesting then Google Now. I think the parallax effect is really neat and subtle. The Quick settings take less button press to get to. The fact that you have to re-alphabetize is annoying though. The Settings app is miles better then stock. The Camera app is a lot better then stock, I love the voice activated capture. I also prefer the Phone, Contacts and Messages app. Easier to use, more features.

In fact I like everything about TouchWiz (S6 version) better then Stock. The launcher is the only thing you could argue is worse, but really it's mostly different. And I was not using Stock launcher on Stock cause it sucks too much, so you can easily change it also on TouchWiz.

The only issues I have with TW are:
- S Finder and Quick Connect link in Quick Settings can't be disabled
- Alarms don't have configurable snooze
- Comes with bloatware that you have to disable.

Arthur Dent

Question for owners, can you make Google Now/search the default, or are you stuck S-voice or whatever it is called?

Dustin Mingo

I work in a phone store that sold Galaxies since the 3, and I've disabled S-voice on every. Single. One. Not a single phone since the Galaxy S4 has gone out with S-voice enabled, and a long press on the home button has yielded Google Now since the 5. 4 I think it was a long press on the menu key. Now I believe Google is required to be used as default search as part of the Play Services agreement in any system apps.

Arthur Dent

Cool. One of my friends had a Note3 and I thought he couldn't change it (I could be wrong, maybe he had it mapped to a diff button than home).

Dustin Mingo

Note that S-voice when enabled is a double-tap on home, while Google Now is always a long-press on home on any Android phone with a "recents" key. In case of Menu key, long-press on Menu results in Google now. I'm not totally clear on what the button layout was on Note 3, but those rules are always 100% and I need a new job :(

Arthur Dent

Thanks for the info! U da man.

Robert_AU

No user swappable battery or no SD would be enough for me to say no. Missing both just makes it look pathetic.

My Note 4 still have them and I can't see much that the S6 has that is an improvement.

meir cohen

Perfect is 10 from 10 on all categorys. 7 from 10 on a battery life.....well, iam sorry but it's not can be a perfect phone !!!
When the hardware is better from the software.....well, this is not perfect at all !
THE GALAXY NOTE 4 IS A BETTER DEVICE.

Thank you.

Arthur Dent

WTF are you on about? Who said it was perfect? Oh, that's right... Nobody.

meir cohen

Nobody? O.k my friend.
WTF. שויין.

meir cohen

Just to inform you all: the s6 has alots of lags. Trust me on that.

Bob G

Just to inform you all, meir cohen is a liar. Trust me on that.

meir cohen

:)

smeddy

AMAZING PHONE.
But battery kills it for me.

Daniel Walsh

Battery life is definitely important.

Jimmy Rocket

Sooooooo can't wait for my Edge to finally arrive.

Cellarzar

The previous excellent phone is the Galaxy S4, the previous genius phone is the Galaxy S2.

Your Mother

I really don't care what these "reviewers" have to say about the Galaxy S6 edge or any other device--be your own judge. go to a store and spend some time with a device yourself and decide if you like it.

there's no such thing as a device that pleases everyone--somebody will find something they don't like about it.

since the S6 went on display at Best Buy I went there numerous times to play with it, today I picked up my wife's phone and I think its absolutely the best phone right now.

and for all the TW critics, this version looks like and behaves like no other version before it., its entirely different and its beautiful.

no other phone offers what TW does and thats what I like about it.

Albert

Spending a few minutes with a phone in a store is not the same as owning one for a considerably long period of time. You need more than just "playing with a phone" in order to make an informed decision to purchase one.

joseph carmine nero

Talking about premium build quality you need to check Xperia Z3 first

Daniel Walsh

I felt the S6 Edge and my Z3 felt better.

jgt1942

Great article. I was going to upgrade until I saw I could not add a SD card or swap out the battery. Currently with Lollipop on my S5 I cannot make it more than 12 hours thus swapping out the battery is a must. I just added a 128GB SD card which only cost $65 to get a S6 phone with 128GB would be super expensive. Hopefully this will be corrected in the S7 or I'll go with another mfg.

Guest

dtrtt . true that Patricia `s report is impossible... on wednesday I bought Saab 99 Turbo since I been making $8569 thiss month and also ten/k this past month

. it's actualy my favourite-work I've had . I began this three months/ago and pretty much straight away was earning more than $75... p/h . you could try here HERE'S MORE DETAIL

whispy_snippet

Great review, Ryan. Samsung slowly turning the ship around.

xx00xx

" I'll just come out and say this doesn't bother me. I don't use a ton of internal storage on phones, and I'm actually quite happy to see Samsung ditch the 16GB base model."

tell that to my mother. she is 55(not mush techno head) but all her music, some music show and pdf is about 35 gb on her galaxy 5
So u a writer who reviews phone; take photo all day; make video; dont use tons of internal space??? i call bullshit

Ashwath Ravee

Yes because people these days don't have access to cloud storage which lets them keep things backed up and off their internal disks right?

Lazy Login

What's the name of that wallpaper that's on the s6? That's fantastic and great review!

Tomzo007

A ridiculous score that gives no credibility. Are there any good review sites out there that aren't backed by Apple?

ABT

Great article, very detailed. My only comment is the title. Samsung has produced a lot of phones. While I agree this is the best one they've produced in recent history. My original Galaxy S was an amazing phone that I used for nearly two years. the numerous custom ROMs and active development kept it alive much longer than most other devices. When you're talking about all the phones Samsung has ever created this original Galaxy must also be considered.

This is absolutely huge so fuck you for not taking this into consideration objectively. It's taking extremely popular options AWAY from the consumer. How does that put this phone above all the rest?

This deserves far more recognition than you gave it. It's a complete deal breaker for a HUGE number of people if you bothered to follow the comments from people whenever there's an article on this phone.

The Note 4/S5 had no such feature removed that had that level of division.

Jun

I wish android has a screen resolution setting so I can set it to 1080p. The battery would be so much better if that was an option. I'm all for tech advances if it's useful and practical. With that said, fk LG for bringing 1440p to the market, now every oem feels the fking need to have 1440p phones because the average consumer thinks more is always better.

godutch

Am I the only one who prefers plastic? I like my phones to be durable and light

Appleman

Looks like another iPhone copy as per usual. I don't support copycats.

Cory Crew

Does anyone else feel like this is a punch in the face to Apple challenging the iPhone like you steal my stuff I'll take some of yours.

rizki mantili

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They're going to need mega battery life to get me to purchase a model where it can't be changed. Similar to the GS5 (which I own now) is not good enough.

what!!

3GB RAM!!? This phone has more RAM than the stupid desktop my employer has me using at work.

df

" It's actually kind of a strange hybrid system—the volume toggle can go to vibrate and silent, but there's no all/priority/none selector. "

Nothing strange about it. Its the same system all phone used until Lollipop, plus the priority setting from, Lollipop. In other words, it should make everyone happy.

Guest

f . I see what you mean... Clarence `s blurb is terrific, on friday I bought a great new Dodge after having made $4460 this past 4 weeks and-just over, 10k this past month . without a doubt its the most-comfortable work Ive had .

I started this seven months/ago and almost straight away began to bring home at least $70, per/hr . over at this website HERE'S MORE DETAIL

Jack Roberts

I love the Galaxy s6 bought it on my birthday (April 10th) and I love it and to all the people wanting a stock version give it a couple of months and cyanogenmod builds will be out and ready for flashing and if that's the only thing that's putting you off then just wait until there avaliable

Cheers! This is one of the most sensible reviews of a phone I have read in a long time. A few questions remain:
1) The S4 was the last Galaxy with a thermo sensor. Silly or not, I find myself missing it quite a lot on the S5. Any chance it returned in the S6 (please please)?
2) I carried a Palm Pre for years with no SD slot, so that's fine. I never remove my SD card or even the battery on the S5 unless the phone freezes and the traditional hard buttons don't work. Which raises an interesting point: what happens when "the phone freezes and the traditional hard buttons don't work?"
3) I keep reading about amazingly dismal (considering the power that's inside) graphics performance, blamed mostly on the high resolution display. This honestly makes sense to me, but are there any software fixes on the horizon for this? I almost wish it didn't have the crazy high res, and don't play many games, but you know, you want a premium phone to have "premium everything."
4) Do Sammy recommend HZO, aquablock, etc. for those of us who just have to have some water resist?

Sergey

Who can tell me the price?

Guest

< col Hiiiiiii Friends....'my friend's mom makes $88 every hour on the internet . She has been unemployed for eight months but last month her payment was $13904 just working on the internet for a few hours.

This seems to be selling well as I've been trying to buy a S6 64gb in gold since it launched and still can't find one. Either that or Tmoble makes buying phones off contract too difficult to figure out.

GJV

Thank you for pointing out that USB OTG thumb drives are a viable alternative to paying through the nose for additional on-board storage. I very much doubt that many people who think they need 64 GB or more actually need that much space and could get by just fine with a thumb drive.

Mix

In the hopes that someone reads this, HELP PLEASE :)

I moved from the Nexus family to the Samsung side with the S6.

How in the 9 hells do I add my exchange email to my google account? With my Nexus I had both my gmail and work email under the one Google app but separate accounts. Now, with touchwiz, the only thing I can get is to have it completely separate.

I really liked having them both under one but the option to add exchange seems to be gone from the gmail app.

Any ideas?!

Thanks!

Guest

< col Hiiiiiii Friends....'my friend's mom makes $88 every hour on the internet . She has been unemployed for eight months but last month her payment was $13904 just working on the internet for a few hours.

< col Hiiiiiii Friends....'Jackson . although Janet `s article is flabbergasting... last week I bought a top of the range Infiniti after having made $7726 this - five weeks past and just over 10/k this past munth . it's realy the most-rewarding I have ever done . I actually started seven months/ago and pretty much straight away started to earn minimum

< col Hiiiiiii Friends....uptil I saw the paycheck saying $8736 , I have faith that my neighbour woz actualy receiving money parttime from their computer. . there friends cousin has done this 4 only about thirteen months and by now repaid the loans on there mini mansion and got a great GMC . visit their website SEE FULL DETAIL